


between the eyes

by Sierra



Category: Free!
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Military, Developing Relationship, Futuristic War AU, Implied Relationships, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-01-31 09:25:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12679059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sierra/pseuds/Sierra
Summary: “Because I was drafted?” Makoto interjects, and the sharp edge of his tone makes Sousuke’s eyes widen fractionally. “The difference between us, Sousuke, is that I never had a choice. You had all the choices in the world, and you chose to be a hitman for hire. Where I’m from, you serve or your family is prosecuted. So if you think I’m acting like I’m better than you,” he spits, “it’s because Iam.”Sousuke flings the knife to the ground, embedding it deep in the dirt instead of where he probably wants to plunge it: Makoto’s neck.“Like that changes anything,” he mutters. “You can’t pretend you didn’t do those things.” He leans forward, a scowl etched on his features. “I’ve seen my fair share of war, Makoto. If the blood is on my hands, it’s on yours too. I could have let you die in the cell. Fuck, I could have killed you while you slept and saved myself the trouble. But I didn’t.”





	between the eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ishka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishka/gifts).



> of all your prompts, iska, did you really think i, being the weak individual that i am, could overlook soumako? ofc not. :x;
> 
> pls take the setting w/a grain of salt. i am a history buff equipped with 0 imagination
> 
> happy birthday to makoots, the bestest of backstrokin boys. <3

Close-range combat is out-dated, a relic of the past. Actively discouraged by his commanders since the first day of training when his lieutenant put a Ruger in his hand, fixed him with a steely look, and ordered him to avoid direct contact unless strictly necessary.

But it’s where Sousuke finds his thrill: in the constricted space of hand-to-hand, the flurry of movement, the overpowering instinct to survive, having to call on his deepest instincts for survival. Nothing else comes close to the exhilaration of a fight where he can exert himself physically, push himself to the limit; nothing compares to a hard-won victory without the use of a gun. The weapons they have now dispel the need for hand-to-hand, and the knives they’re armed with are for show, a display of strength. A warning to would-be enemies.

For a while he stays where he’s meant to, flat on his stomach behind the barricades. He levels the barrel of the sniper on his shoulder, focuses his gaze through the scope, and inhales slowly before he takes aim. The raised voices of the men around him fade to a distant cacophony, a faint drone in his ears. He pays them no mind, his mind focused to task. Through the magnified glass, he watches the bodies crumple as he cuts them down, one shot after another. They don’t look human from this far away, and that makes it easier.

The soldier beside him crawls away to re-load, mumbling about the empty bullet casings scattered around them.

Sensing the opportunity, Sousuke glances back to check he isn’t being watched. The other men are on the lower level of the battlement, too preoccupied with loading weapons to pay attention to much else. He heaves himself to his feet, snatches up his handguns, shoves them into the holsters strapped to his thighs, and makes a break for the stairs. His footsteps sound like gunshots to his ears, mingling in with the other sounds ricocheting off the walls. He doubles his pace when he reaches level ground.

His absence is realised almost instantly. The alarmed shouting brings him immeasurable satisfaction. Either they’ll hunt him down and bring him back at the cost of manpower and time, maybe sideline him until the next time his particular skillset is required, or they’ll let him go. Pursuing him is hardly worth their limited resources in the midst of a battle, and Sousuke is keenly aware of it.

“Yamazaki!” his lieutenant bellows after him from somewhere far above.

Sousuke can’t help but grin. His gray bodysuit makes him nearly invisible in the early morning fog, and he’s too valuable an asset to be gunned down, proven his worth one too many times to be collateral damage. The lieutenant knows which side he’s fighting for.

They also know better than to insult him by bringing him to the frontlines and then saddling him with gun duty like some common soldier with no other use. His rank is higher than that, his skills better suited to what he craves most. He was always more of an assassin than a soldier, too unyielding to take orders. He’s wasted on such banal tasks when the war has so much more to offer him than rudimentary long-range gun fights and cowering behind a blockade.

Before he can infiltrate the enemy’s camp, he’s intercepted by a battalion of soldiers on the outskirts of the wooded area concealing their supply line. Five men, armed to the teeth with assault rifles and magazine belts slung over their shoulders, helmets reflecting the budding light of the early morning sun. They’re all startled to action when he skids to a halt in front of them, his hands already tearing the guns from their holsters before the new targets register in his mind.

A moment of silence passes as he draws the gun muzzles high, aiming without a word . Two of the men fumble with their clips, and one of the soldiers lifts his rifle in line with Sousuke’s head before it’s even loaded but they’re too slow.

In the skirmish, he loses the knife strapped at his hip to a dying man’s scrabbling hand, but by then all but one of the soldiers have fallen to a hail of bullets. Their bodies litter the ground around him. Blood leaks from mouths, nostrils, wounds gaping through their armour, mixing with deep hues of russet.

The mufflers on Sousuke’s guns are all that's preventing another regiment from being alerted to his presence.

The remaining solder is frozen in place, his breath steaming the glass on the inside of the helmet. Sousuke slips his guns away and bends to retrieve the knife lost in the fight, never taking his eyes off the soldier, who appears to be incapable of anything more than staring him down. But Sousuke can’t afford to ignore the risk posed by man with a weapon; the soldier has a blade of his own, clutched loosely in the hand dangling at his side. He might have none of the will necessary to make the kill, but a threat is a threat.

Sousuke still bears the scars of the first man he underestimated—a long, jagged mark running the vertical length of his flank. An inerasable reminder that he once made a mistake that almost cost him his life.

And Sousuke has seen what men will do to survive. Men in far more dire circumstances than the soldier before him now, men driven by desperation and a primal desire to fight, to survive.

The first move is his. He dashes forward and feints to the right, knife poised for a slash at the throat, but he catches the handle of the soldier’s blade in the jaw instead.

The edge of Sousuke’s knife bounces off the soldier’s helmet, splintering the visor with a deafening crack. Pain radiates along his cheekbone and through his temples, and he reels back, drops into a defensive stance as his breath hisses out in a sharp exhale.

His eyes rove the soldier’s tense body. He has arm drawn in front of him protectively—and not the one wielding the weapon, interestingly. A grin tugs at Sousuke’s lips.

He wasn’t expecting to be matched on his first strike. He didn’t expect a wary soldier to fight back at all. He’d expected an easy kill, another domino to knock down on his path.

And what he gets is soulful green eyes imploring him to stop, stop, _stop_ through the cracked fibreglass.

The soldier stumbles back as Sousuke surges in again, invigorated by the thrill of an opponent who can hold his own.

Switching tactics, he targets the soldier’s midsection with an adroit throw of his fist. He chokes out a noise when the soldier takes him by surprise again, one of his arms snaking around Sousuke’s neck in a sleeper hold. He flips the knife around and blindly jabs it toward the soldier’s throat, the infinitesimal gap between his armour and the helmet. The soldier swiftly disarms him with a severe twist of his wrist, and the knife falls out of his grip. His free hand clutches at the arm increasingly tightening, cutting off his supply of air.

For the first time in a long time, Sousuke feels a cold, abrupt fear. _Is this how it feels_ , he thinks, _in the moments before your life is taken?_

He gasps for breath, the world narrowing to a point. His guns are well within reach but they feel a hundred miles away.

The soldier’s body stiffens behind him. The faint, dizzying whir of rotors overhead somehow reaches Sousuke through the roaring blood in his ears, and the suffocating grip suddenly grows slack. The soldier shoves him away, eyes riveted to the gray, cloudy sky.

Sousuke falls forward onto his knees, raising a hand to touch his tender neck. Black spots dance in front of his eyes as blood rushes back to his brain, and he coughs a few times to clear his windpipe of the constricted feeling.

He glances up to find the soldier wrenching his helmet off. Then the forest beyond them is engulfed in wreathing flame, and all the world is burning.

* * *

Time passes differently in the dark.

But it’s not the dark that bothers Makoto: it’s his cell mate. The one who was trying to murder him in cold blood not two days ago. His enemy. Someone on the other side of the war. He doesn’t know the man’s name or his purpose, just that forty-eight hours trapped with him in an underground cell is a terribly unfortunate fate, and one that he probably deserves. It’s certainly worse than anything Makoto could have dreamt up for himself, and he’s given it some thought over the last few months. His questionable acts in the name of war have made him doubt his humanity, question parts of himself that he thought he used to know.

And his cell mate has yet to utter so much as a word or glance in his direction. Not that he could tell without light, but he remembers the weight of that gaze from the other day. He’d know if it landed on him even for a heartbeat because his skin would be crawling. It’s near impossible to get a decent night’s sleep, knowing that the moment he closes his eyes might be his last.

With no way to determine if the sun is setting or rising, or if the world as they know it has ceased to exist, he loses track of the seconds, then the minutes, and finally hours. Sleep eludes him as ever it did when he was a free man, well before the realities of war became a fixture in his mind, whether awake or asleep.

He’s been plucking away at the brick wall in his boredom, feeling the grain crumbling under his finger, when his cell mate grunts.

“How long?”

The voice is rough from disuse, almost a growl.

Being selectively mute is hardly the worst decision Makoto has ever made. As long as his mouth is shut, he’s in considerably less danger.

His shoulders tighten, and his own voice feels like it’s trapped somewhere in his chest.

“A few days,” he says, raspy to his own ears. The sleep-deprivation and the sense of defeat are tangible in his next words. “Maybe more, maybe less.”  
  
“Shit,” the man mutters under his breath, and there’s the sound of a zipper. His clothes are different to anything Makoto has ever seen a soldier wear before—tight, patternless gray fabric covering every inch of skin from ankle to wrist to the rise of his collarbone. “What the hell was it?”

“Gas? A bomb?”

Makoto shifts to sit against the wall, tilting his head back. He frowns, recalling little more than the acrid smoke that rose from the fire, the traces of fumes, being blown back by the blast and knocked unconscious.

“Never seen anything like it.”

He smiles wanly. “What I want to know is who was responsible for it.”

The man exhales a sigh. “Wasn’t one of ours.”

“I don’t think it was ours, either,” Makoto muses.

“Doesn’t matter now.” A metallic noise as something skids across the floor, sliding to a stop against Makoto’s knee. “Drink it. Have a feeling our friends up there aren’t gonna be looking after us."

Makoto twists the lid off the flask, wondering if his cell mate has been drinking silently in the dark the whole time. Not that he’s obligated to share, considering how close Makoto came to ending his life.

“My name is Makoto,” he mumbles after taking a slow sip. The water soothes his throat, washes away the taste of ash and homesickness on his tongue.

A pause, and the man’s voice dips an octave. “Sousuke.”

“Well,” Makoto says, capping the flask and launching it across the other side of the room. It bounces off a wall, narrowly missing Sousuke’s head by the grunt of alarm, and he smiles to himself. “Looks like we’re stuck here for the foreseeable future, Sousuke.”

* * *

It’s the thirst that breaks them.

Makoto isn’t Sousuke’s problem; he doesn’t have to keep Makoto alive. He owes him nothing except a swift death, and even that would be a mercy at this point. It’s been a week, maybe more, since either of them ate more than table scraps too rancid to feed even to stray dogs. Despite rationing and trying to minimize their exertions, Sousuke’s flask ran out in less than three days.

It’s colder than usual, so it must be close to nightfall. The only time there’s any light is when the guard comes down the stairs from above to shove two plates through a slot in the door, and it’s enough to make Sousuke feel like he’s staring directly into the sun.

“You’re dehydrated,” he mutters, pinching the skin on the inside of Makoto’s elbow. He can feel how slowly it folds back into place, and heaves a sigh. “You’re not gonna last unless you drink your own piss.”

“That’s what you wanted,” Makoto says tartly. “Congratulations.”

“It was nothing personal,” Sousuke scoffs. “I was getting paid.”

It should be disconcerting, even perplexing, how quickly they fell into a relatively comfortable pattern with each other. Sousuke stopped questioning it, knowing that’s a waste of his limited energy. He’s been locked in the dark with his would-be enemy for too long to waste time trying to work against him. Their survival depends on ability to co-exist now. The initial animosity dissipated when it became apparent that they had a common enemy, and that working against each other would only sabotage any chance of surviving. Makoto took some convincing, still wary of Sousuke despite him being the sole reason Makoto isn’t on death’s door just yet.

And with that comfortable pattern came the unexpected ease of being in close proximity. It helps with warmth in their dank, chilly cell, but for Makoto, it seems to assuage some of his loneliness. The fatigue eventually overpowered him, and in his sleep he cries out often and helplessly. Sometimes it’s a name, and other times it’s anguished whimpering, endless tossing and turning until either the nightmares ease or Sousuke, agitated by the rattling of the thin mattress, rouses him from his sleep with a rough shake of his shoulder. And each time Makoto wakes, trembling and sweating profusely.

Sousuke can’t say he’s ever had dreams of that ilk. Sometimes he sees faces, other times he sees nothing but the black in his mind’s eye. He learned to live with the guilt a long time ago, and he figured out how to bury it deep so it couldn’t surface unbidden. Even under the influence of alcohol, Sousuke’s memories are under lock and key where they’re safe.

“They’ll bring water,” Makoto says, edging on hopeful. Sousuke has to wonder how the hell he can still have it in him after everything. “They must need us alive for something, or…”

“We don’t know anything.” Sousuke’s tone is harsh, like a dash of cold water to the face for Makoto, who flinches. “Neither of us is gonna survive much longer like this.”

“Then why keep us here?” Makoto swallows audibly. “Why not just kill us?”

“Who knows. They’re letting us live for now, barely. We’ll waste away before we find out what they’re gonna do to us or what they want us for.”

A silence stretches on as Sousuke adjusts the blanket around his shoulders.

“This isn’t how I planned to die,” Makoto laments. “I would have preferred old age. Maybe in my bed. Surrounded by my family and friends, like the movies. I’d even take a car accident over this…”

There’s an undercurrent of sarcasm that might be impossible to detect if Sousuke hadn’t become so intimately acquainted with the nuances of Makoto’s voice. There’s subtleties to it that he never noticed before in anyone else’s voice, but maybe he was never listening for it. The never-ending dark forced him to change that way, but it’s made his hearing sharper, more attuned to the slightest shift in the atmosphere around him.

“Neither,” Sousuke says wryly, smirking to himself. “I never planned to die at all.”

“I don’t think anybody does.” Makoto coughs out a laugh, his throat noticeably dry. “But if you had to choose?”

“A glorious death.”

“Did I mishear when you introduced yourself?” Makoto asks. “Are you sure your name isn’t Achilles?”

Sousuke seizes a musty pillow and flings it at Makoto, earning the first laugh he’s heard since they were dragged into the cell blindfolded and handcuffed like the pair of war criminals they are.

* * *

“Before, when you said you were getting paid,” Makoto murmurs to the dark, “what did you mean?"

Sousuke’s stifled sigh sounds like a gunshot in the quiet. “Is that what’s keeping you up at night?”

“Well, no.” Fiddling with the edge of the blanket, Makoto tugs at a frayed piece, wondering if the cotton always felt so scratchy or if he’s become sensitive to it all of a sudden. “I just wondered what you meant by it. It was a strange thing to say, and you’re…”

 _Stealthy_ , Makoto thinks, like a panther. _Preternaturally silent when you move._

“Sousuke?” He almost cringes at how feeble his voice sounds.

The silence is telling.

Makoto rushes to fill it, rationalising in his mind as the words fly. “Nobody _wants_ to kill other people.” His throat constricts around a thickening lump. “It’s just necessary. We’re in the middle of a war, we’re—”

A long, heavy exhale. It sounds like Makoto’s name is carried in the undertone of Sousuke’s breath. The weight of the world Sousuke lives in falls on Makoto’s shoulders then, and he doesn’t know whether he should grasp it or let it crush him.

“We’re expendable,” Sousuke interrupts. “They don’t give a single fuck about us. The quicker you understand that, the better off you’ll be.”

Sousuke’s body shifts on the other side of the bed, rolling toward Makoto, and Makoto feels those depthless eyes focus on him through the gloom. He can’t see Sousuke’s face, but Sousuke’s eyebrows are probably drawn together, that customary scowl at his lips.

There has to be frustration there. Frustration with Makoto’s refusal to be hopeless, frustration with what Sousuke probably wrongfully assumes is his naiveté. It must be incomprehensible to Sousuke that Makoto was drafted to his cause instead of recruited for a job that renumerates in blood.

“I was paid,” Sousuke mutters, confirming Makoto’s fears in the time it takes to slit a throat and take a life. “Hired.”

“You’re a mercenary.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Sousuke says, his tone bordering on exasperation. “It’s a career like any other. You perform certain duties, you get money. I don’t expect you to know what that’s like, though. Your inability to understand the real world is fucking staggering.”

A sudden compulsion to try and solve a problem using Sousuke’s methods strikes Makoto like a snake in the dark. He wonders how he might do it—with blood, his fists, or by sheer force. The snap of anger is a potent venom, its fangs sinking into his skin, rotting his flesh from without, decaying at his insides and immobilising his capacity for higher thought.

“Not where I come from,” he says softly, and doesn’t elaborate further. He couldn’t if he wanted to; his tongue is like lead in his mouth.

Sousuke is content to roll over again, taking most of the blanket with him. “You have a lot to learn, Makoto.”

It stings to hear it, and his face feels hot, but he tries to ignore the deeper meaning of Sousuke’s words.

“I can’t stay in here.” The cold is negligible, and it’s not what causes a shiver to crawl across Makoto’s skin. “I won’t stay in here.”

“Like it or not,” Sousuke says as Makoto begins to doze off, “we’re here. Probably for good.”

* * *

When the slot slides open to deliver the slop masquerading as their food, Makoto lets out a long, agonised moan that gives the guard pause. The sunlight is creeping in is diminutive but it’s too bright for Sousuke, his pupils adjusted to what feels like weeks in the absolute dark.

The light leaking into the cell illuminates Makoto’s form, lying prone facing the wall. The low moaning continues, broken by the occasional shuddering gasp.

Sousuke arches an eyebrow. Makoto hasn’t spoken a single word to him since their last conversation, giving him the most mild cold shoulder in history, but there hasn’t been any evidence he was unwell until this very moment. Sousuke might be jaded but this from Makoto, a weakened but otherwise functioning person, strikes him as suspicious.

Even though Sousuke isn’t convinced, the guard’s concern is stirred. He studies Makoto for what feels like an eternity, then thumps a fist against the wall and sends a shout upwards for help in a language Sousuke doesn’t recognise. He hears the heavy bolt come undone, followed by what sounds like a series of locks. The door swings open with a high-pitched whine, bathing the entire cell in sudden sunlight.

Sousuke shields his eyes with his forearm from the assault on his retinas, and sits back to watch.

A clattering of footsteps comes racing down the stairs—another two guards, by the sounds of their voices. They fall silent, gazing at Makoto from beyond the door. A guard motions at Makoto, saying something to the other two in hushed tones. The first guard nods and lifts his rifle, holding it aimed at Sousuke’s forehead.

He frowns and raises both hands in a gesture of surrender as the other two men stalk in. One of the guards grasps Makoto’s upper arm and starts to tug, and the other grabs hold of a leg.

Sousuke sees the error instantly when Makoto’s fingers twitch almost imperceptibly. A second later, one guard is facedown on the floor after Makoto’s boot collides with the side of his head, and the other man howls in pain as Makoto jabs at his eyes. The third guard panics, shifting the rifle toward Makoto, but he’s too late. Makoto darts to his feet, shooting Sousuke a look that plainly says _fucking run_ , and crashes into the guard with a lowered shoulder, sending him colliding into the wall with a yelp.

Frozen, Sousuke watches it unfold in front of him in slow-motion. He wonders why Makoto’s plan didn’t occur to him before, why he never thought up such a simple plan to get them freed, how Makoto bested him before and is besting him still, and—

“Sousuke,” Makoto shouts, pointing agitatedly at the stairs before he wrestles the rifle from the guard’s hands. “ _Move_!”

Without stopping to look back, Sousuke rushes for the stairwell. The sunlight is blinding, and the exertion of propelling himself up the stairs nearly overwhelms him, but he pushes on. At the landing, another guard on a parapet far above notices him immediately and raises the alarm by screaming.

He hesitates, but Makoto is only a moment behind him, shoving at his shoulder to force him onwards. It spurs him to action, and for the first time in a long time, he runs for his life. Lungs aching, his feet feeling like concrete weights, the dizzying light still obscuring his surroundings.

They run for what feels like days. Makoto is struggling as much as he is, but the pace never falters until they’re deep in the woods, as far from their prison as they can get. Sousuke is the one to call it off, practically collapsing against a tree. His heart races, trying to keep up with his laboured, shallow breathing, and he presses his forehead to the cool bark while he waits for it to slow.

Somewhere close by, Makoto has fallen to his knees to catch his own breath with hands braced on his thighs, coughing intermittently.

Still panting, Sousuke fixes Makoto with an intense stare. “You should have told me.”

“And risk never getting to see that look on your face?” Makoto asks, grinning despite everything. “Hell no. It worked better without you knowing, anyway. You can’t imitate that kind of surprise.”

Sousuke huffs out a laugh, swiping the back of his hand across his forehead. “Yeah.” He pauses, examining the environment around them.

Makoto follows his gaze, biting at his lip pensively. “Where are we?”

“No idea,” Sousuke answers. “But we need to move. We can’t be more than two miles away by now. They’ll send out a hunting party before long.”

Makoto slings the guard’s rifle over his shoulder, seeming lost in Sousuke’s words, dazed by the implication. “ _We_?”

“We came this far. If I abandoned you now, it’d just be cruel.”

“I’m the reason you’re free,” Makoto points out. “Remember that.”

“You were also the reason I almost died,” Sousuke grouses, jerking his head to the north. “Let’s go. Water has to be that way, we’re elevated here.”

“Wait.”

Turning back, Sousuke bounces an eyebrow. “What? Time is of the essence.”

“This is yours,” Makoto says, clearly pleased with himself as he grasps Sousuke’s wrist and presses his long-lost knife into his hand. He winks at Sousuke, then moves off, leaving Sousuke no choice but to follow him wordlessly, gazing down at it. “One of the guards had it. Must be valuable, huh?”

He turns the knife over slowly, brushing his fingers over the patterns carved into the handle, over the serrated edges that have served him so well over the years.

Sousuke jogs to catch up. Makoto casts him a knowing sidelong look, and Sousuke offers a grin, perhaps the first genuine one since they’ve met. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Makoto says, and smiles back.

Sousuke tucks the knife back into its sheath, grimacing at the scent of his body. His clothes reek of sweat and mould from the less-than-sanitary conditions they’ve been living in for the last week, and he can’t imagine Makoto smells any better. While Makoto is preoccupied with stepping over a fallen, rotted tree trunk, Sousuke sidles close to check surreptitiously, and makes a face.

“Don’t know about you,” he grumbles, “but I need a bath.”

Makoto nods in agreement, and he steps aside to let Sousuke take the lead. They pick their way down the steep embankment for the better part of an hour until the sound of running water reaches their ears. On seeing the river, Makoto doesn’t wait for Sousuke, bolting to the water’s edge and stripping off his clothes in record time. He must have removed his armour back in the cell, because his underclothes resemble Sousuke’s bodysuit closely in make and functionality, though they’re lined with neon-green trim, and they’re looser.

He lets Makoto bathe first, finding a seat on the ground beside Makoto’s pile of clothes and his other scant belongings. They only have the clothes on their backs now, he thinks, rifling through Makoto’s things for the guard’s rifle.

“All the advancements they’ve made in weaponry,” he says, inspecting the rifle carefully, “all the technology they have access to… And they’d arm you with something like this? They have a lot more faith in your ability to survive than you do.”

“Put that back,” Makoto insists, though there’s not much he can do about it waist-deep in water as he is. “That’s not even similar to one of ours, and you aren’t exactly pushing the envelope yourself when it comes to advanced weaponry.”

“Maybe,” Sousuke admits, drumming his fingers along the barrel before placing it back down. “We use snipers. Halves the risk, doubles the success rate. But a decent knife is all I need.”

“You had guns. Two, if I recall.”

“Not by choice,” Sousuke sighs. “Part of my contract. I would’ve preferred none. Don’t need ‘em.”

That seems to sober Makoto. He falls silent and ducks underneath the water for a few long seconds. Slicking his hair back slowly, he stares at the surface, chewing at the inside of his cheek.

“We don’t have to stay together,” he says abruptly, frowning.

Sousuke stares, waiting for him to expound.

“You’re free to go,” he says at length. “If you think you know what you’re doing. We don’t know where we are, or how to get home. But by all means.”

Finally, Makoto’s eyes turn to Sousuke. There’s a strange yearning there that speaks to some hidden part of Sousuke, a part of him that’s hard to acknowledge.

“We have a better chance if we stay together,” he murmurs, half-convincing himself as he says it. “We’ve been through enough already for me to trust you, at least a little.”

“Harsh,” Sousuke comments. He sighs and falls back to lie down, folding his arms behind his head. “You’re gonna need to trust me a lot more if you want to make it home again, Makoto.”

* * *

As it turns out, freedom has a severe downside. Where Makoto previously had no choice but to rely on Sousuke, now he has the occasional doubt, wondering if the Sousuke can be trusted, or whether he’s going to end up with that knife in his back. He remembers Sousuke’s words, how he said them, the nonchalance in his tone.

Like a bloodhound, Sousuke picks up on his reservations. It’s after nightfall and he’s propped against a tree, one knee drawn up as he skins the rabbit Makoto captured earlier.

Makoto stokes the fire with another piece of wood, relishing in the warmth licking at his skin. They’ve been sleeping outdoors for a few days now, acclimating to the elements, but the cold has seeped into Makoto’s bones. Sousuke seems unaffected by it the same way he’s unaffected by change, indifferent to the weather and the threats of nature.

“You have to make a decision,” Sousuke says, flicking a scrap of unwanted flesh to the ever-growing pile at his feet. “We’re getting close to the border now. We’ll run into soldiers from either side eventually.”

“I wasn’t counting on this,” Makoto mumbles. “I just wanted to do finish my duty, go back home to my family.”

Sousuke shrugs carelessly. “Life’s a bitch.”

He looks away, bile rising in his throat as Sousuke guts the rabbit and discards its innards with a sweep of the knife. They have to eat, but he can’t quite get used to having to kill his own food. He was taught how to hunt, how to trap, and how to snap an animal’s neck for a quick and painless death, but he never had to do it for himself until now.

And even then, Sousuke, a veteran of death-making, does it for him. He barely batted an eye when he pulled the rabbit from the snare despite its frightened squeaks and cracked its vertebrae between his hands with a one sharp twist.

“I wasn’t counting on a third party getting into bed with two warring armies or ending up imprisoned,” Sousuke continues, reaching for a branch he sharpened earlier into a makeshift spit for the meat. Makoto buries his face in a hand to avoid seeing it, rubbing at his temple to allay the oncoming headache. “But here we are.”

“You weren’t counting on anything except getting blood on your hands,” he snaps back unthinkingly. His skin prickles with the heat of irritation as Sousuke stops what he’s doing to stare incredulously at him from across the fire, the rabbit now suspended over the crackling flames.

As if he was born yesterday.

As if he hasn’t figured Sousuke out—who he is, _what_ he is.

Silently, Sousuke perches the branch atop two rocks.

Makoto can’t meet his eyes yet, gazing fixatedly at the glowing coals as he wraps his arms around his knees. The scent of sizzling flesh makes his mouth water; despite his revulsion, they’ve barely eaten since their escape, scavenging a meal where they could out of what they could. Fortunately, Sousuke knows more about surviving in the wild than he does.

“You don’t know me,” Sousuke says at length, deathly-soft. “Where I’ve been. Don’t act like you’re better than me because you’re—”

“Because I was drafted?” Makoto interjects, and the sharp edge of his tone makes Sousuke’s eyes widen fractionally. “The difference between us, Sousuke, is that I never had a choice. You had all the choices in the world, and you chose to be a hitman for hire. Where I’m from, you serve or your family is prosecuted. So if you think I’m acting like I’m better than you,” he spits, “it’s because I _am_.”

Sousuke flings the knife to the ground, embedding it deep in the dirt instead of where he probably wants to plunge it: Makoto’s neck.

“Like that changes anything,” he mutters. “You can’t pretend you didn’t do those things.” He leans forward, a scowl etched on his features. “I’ve seen my fair share of war, Makoto. If the blood is on my hands, it’s on yours too. I could have let you die in the cell. Fuck, I could have killed you while you slept and saved myself the trouble. But I didn’t.”

“Can you spontaneously grow a conscience and dispose of it at will? That must be a really useful skill, but then you’re a mercenary.” A humourless smile stretches Makoto’s lips and he pushes himself to stand. “It’s not all that surprising that you can turn your humanity on and off depending on your mood. If only every army had ten of you, they’d be unstoppable.”

He turns his back on Sousuke, stalking toward the other side of the clearing. He rakes his hands through his hair, grinding the teeth on one side of his mouth. He’d rather sleep high in a tree and risk a fall that breaks his neck than stay on the ground anywhere near Sousuke, and he’d rather go to bed starving than eat sitting across from Sousuke in cold, uncomfortable silence, trying to pretend the conversation never happened, wishing that they had never met in the first place.

He only makes it halfway to the tree line before he hears pounding footsteps. Sousuke tackles him from behind, winding him with the force of it. Makoto grits his teeth as they both tumble to the ground, Sousuke ending up at the base of a tree as Makoto crashes face-first into the dirt. He can taste it in his mouth, along with a trickle of blood where his tongue got caught between his teeth, and he wheezes out a cough before shifting up onto his knees.

“What are you doing?” he rasps, glaring. Sousuke as he pulls himself up as well, wincing at the bump to the back of his head, courtesy of the tree. “Sousuke, why—”

“Fuck you, Makoto,” Sousuke hisses. “Just fuck you.”

Makoto blinks uncomprehendingly in the second before Sousuke is on him again, grappling him down to the ground in a flurry of limbs with a colourful string of expletives. In a moment of striking clarity, Makoto recalls their first fight, Sousuke taken off-guard by the fact Makoto could hold his own.

Light flashes in front of his eyes as Sousuke buries a fist in his gut, and the breath gets knocked out of him again. Gathering all his strength, Makoto strikes out with his elbow and it connects with Sousuke’s solar plexus; he can almost feel the spasms the instant they start, and he uses the opportunity to roll out from under Sousuke while he’s immobilised, clutching at his midsection with gasping, heaving breaths.

The shock and irritation on Sousuke’s face register to Makoto as his own ability to breathe returns to him, albeit shallow and painful. He backs away a few steps as Sousuke hauls himself to his feet, watching Makoto reproachfully. It’s as close to regret as Makoto has ever seen on Sousuke, a fact he takes pride in. As much as he loathes fighting, there’s something primal tangled up in it, an urge to take, to win.

“More than you bargained for?” he asks, satisfied at the sheer annoyance that flashes in Sousuke’s eyes. “Pick your battles, Sousuke. This isn’t one that ends well for either of us.”

“That’s not what I want,” Sousuke says quietly when Makoto starts to leave, making him pause in his tracks. He wonders if he heard wrong, if it’s the wind whispering, caressing the leaves above them.

But against his better judgement, he faces Sousuke with a brow raised high.

“What?”

Sousuke clears his throat, pointedly avoiding Makoto’s eyes.

Blowing out a soft sigh, Makoto makes his way back to Sousuke, standing close enough to catch any more mumbled words.

“Is this your way of trying to apologise?” he asks, searching Sousuke’s face. “You have a strange way of showing it, Sousuke.”

Bathed in moonlight like this, caught somewhere between baleful and remorseful, Sousuke comes close to being attractive.

The thought reverberates through Makoto’s mind like a bullet. He presses his lips together firmly.

“What is it?” he says exasperatedly when Sousuke doesn’t break his silence, digging a little further under Makoto’s skin. “ _Please_ say something before I take your rabbit and leave you here for the wolves.”

Sousuke chuckles. “Nothing,” he says. “You are just more than I bargained for.”

* * *

The closer they get to the border, the more helicopters they see patrolling overhead; sometimes when they fly low enough, soldiers are visible from inside the cockpit. Sousuke takes great pains to ensure they aren’t seen, keeping them concealed in the thickest parts of the woods. Makoto follows orders to stay low, complaining of his sore lower back every now and then until Sousuke’s death-stare resigns him to suffering in silence.

The unmarked helicopters are like a beacon calling him home even if he doesn’t know what kind of welcome might be waiting for him. Disciplinary action, maybe a suspension for a month or two. At worst, dishonourable discharge. He can find work elsewhere if that turns out to be the case; mostly he’s concerned with collecting his pay check if it’s going to be his last. And that involves presenting himself to the army base alive sooner or later, facing the wrath of his lieutenant for acting out of line in the first place. He’s not looking forward to that part.

“How far now?” Makoto inquires. “Surely not more than a day or two.”

He’s standing at the base of the tree Sousuke has scaled to get a better look at their surroundings, arms crossed firmly. His patience has been worn thin over the course of the last few days, and Sousuke can’t find it in himself to be pissed off with Makoto’s curt attitude after what transpired the other night.

“Another day’s hike,” Sousuke calls down to him. “Maybe longer, since we’re gonna have to be more careful the closer we get. If anyone sees us, we’re fucked.”

“One of us fucked,” Makoto says sullenly. “Depending on who sees us first…”

Working his way back down the tree trunk, Sousuke lands heavily on his feet. “It’s gonna work out,” he says. “Relax.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re the one leading us, how do I know you’re not—”

“Don’t insult me by finishing that thought,” Sousuke warns. “Remember who feeds you.”

“I could feed myself.”

“What, with leaves and dirt? Hate to break it to you, but the nutritional value is lower than your IQ, Tachibana.”

Makoto gapes. “Last name basis? I’ve been _demoted_?”

Sousuke can trust Makoto to focus on the most insignificant issue at a time when he could be focused on anything else, like helping Sousuke set up for the night.

He moves between the trees to gather kindling, yawning. “Make yourself useful and make a pit.”

Mumbling, Makoto crouches and scoops dirt with his hands. By the time Sousuke meanders over with an armful of wood, Makoto has found enough rocks to create a ring around the hole. He dumps the branches in and leaves Makoto to start the fire, retrieving the snare from Makoto’s belongings.

“Stay here,” he says. “I’m going to find what I can.”

* * *

If all goes according to Sousuke’s plan, this could be the last night he spends lying wide awake on his back beside a softly snoring Makoto, staring at the stars. The ground is cold and hard underneath him, but a warm breeze is blowing through in the early morning hours. He’s no stranger to unfavourable sleeping quarters—he’s a soldier—but even with his ability to fall asleep anywhere at any time, Sousuke can find no rest here.

He thought adjusting to life with a target on his back would be a simple matter of turning a blind eye, putting it out of his mind that they’re effectively on the run. Keeping Makoto’s company automatically makes Sousuke a risk for his army, and he imagines it’s the same for Makoto.

The reality of the life he’s leading now, running parallel to Makoto’s until they reach the inevitable fork in the road, is not one he expected. He’s no more used to sleeping with one eye open now than he was the day they escaped.

Though Makoto seems to have acclimated rather well. Sousuke tilts his gaze towards his dozing companion’s form with a smirk, scratching the stubble on his cheek absently.

Makoto sleeps better out here in the open than he ever did with four walls, a lumpy mattress, and a door in their cell, buffering them from the outside world, which makes no sense to Sousuke. The nightmares seem to have stopped, but he could do without the snoring. A useless trade-off when both keep Sousuke up at night.

For a while, he studies the constellations. He tries to make sense of the patterns, but he’s never been much for science, math, or books; the names of most evade him, and trying to recall them just irritates him.

He holds back a sigh, pillowing his head on an arm tucked behind it. Closing his eyes for a few minutes, he tries to think of what might soothe him to sleep. There are no thoughts of home because he hasn’t got one, and the last members of his family died so long ago that Sousuke can recall names and faces, but their voices have faded from memory. Any feeling that remains is one he has no heart left to name.

It’s cost him in the past to keep close ties. Friends, family, lovers. There’s no deterrence to forming relationships quite like death. It leaves a wound that gapes and aches long after the fact, and Sousuke has yet to find a balm for it.

His eyes trace the stars. Maybe it’s in the taking of life that he finds some healing, some sense of retribution for what he lost.

He shifts onto his side only to come face-to-face with Makoto, whose eyes are open and gazing into his curiously.

Startled, Sousuke starts to sit upright. Makoto curls a hand in the front of his suit and yanks him back down with a soft laugh.

“Relax,” he murmurs, mimicking Sousuke’s earlier advice.

Sousuke complies, lowering himself slowly. “How long have you been awake?”

“Long enough to see you glaring at the universe,” Makoto answers. “What did they ever do to you?”

“I was thinking,” Sousuke mutters defensively.

“About what?”

Sousuke hesitates, his gaze falling away from Makoto’s.

His walls are already thrown up, because Makoto likes to talk. Worse, Makoto likes to ask questions, to probe things that should be left alone. And yet, Sousuke knows there are cracks in his defences. Makoto has worn away at them day by day, chipping at his outer layers until inevitably they folded. Sousuke let him, and damned if he knows why. Maybe Makoto is just that quietly persistent, or maybe the loneliness dogging Sousuke’s steps since the moment he stepped into the army’s service has caught up with him at last and Makoto is just the unwitting architect of his ground zero.

Makoto sighs. “You can tell me. I know too much about you from the last few weeks already.” He smiles teasingly. “What harm is a little more?”

“Your persuasive skills,” Sousuke drawls, “are an affront to nature.”

“You’re avoiding my question.”

“Fine,” Sousuke grouses. “Thinking about what I’ll do after this.”

Makoto blinks. “You’ll just go back to what you were doing before, right?”

“It’s not that simple,” Sousuke says with some reluctance. “I disobeyed my orders, acted out of line.”

“So you can get out of it.”

Sousuke lets the silence gather briefly. “I don’t want to get out of it. It’s all I know.”

“You’re a terrible mercenary,” Makoto states. “You keep saving people you’re meant to kill. And like I said, nobody enjoys it.”

Sousuke pauses, weighs a response. “You could be dead come morning.”

“If you did,” Makoto says unwaveringly, looking him directly in the eye, “I would already be dead.”

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://sierrasuke.tumblr.com/) ◇ [twitter](https://twitter.com/sierrasuke)
> 
> thanks for reading :>


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